Nowadays, it is possible to use in many telephone networks a so-called answering service. In this case, it is possible for a person calling to leave a short voice message to a recipient who cannot be reached at the moment the call is made. For each user of an answering service, there exists in a memory of a voice mail system a voice mailbox of his own, wherein the voice messages intended for each user are stored. If the recipient of a call does not answer the call, a telephone operator or some other unit responsible for the maintenance of a voice mail system responsible for the switching of voice messages will answer the call; request the caller to leave a voice message to the person he is trying to reach; receive the voice message dictated by the caller; and store it in a memory in a digital format in the voice mailbox of the person who could not be reached. When the person for whom the call directed to the voice mail system was intended, next time contacts the voice mail system, for example, with his mobile station, the system will read from the memory the stored voice message and send it in an electronic format to the terminal of said person, such as to a mobile station of a cellular network, which will repeat the voice message transmitted in an electronic format as speech. Here, by the terminal is meant all terminals suitable for processing voice data, such as mobile stations, phones of a public switched telephone network (PSTN), and computer terminals that are connected to a telephone network.
A voice mail system differs from a conventional telephone answering set in that the installations and functions of a voice mail system are centralised in a telephone network, whereas a conventional telephone answering device is located decentralised in connection with a user's terminal.
Most voice mail systems VMS according to prior art (FIG. 1) send a notification message to a person who could not be reached of the fact that a voice message has been left for the person in question in the voice mail system as is presented in the patent applications WO 98/46034 and EP 0 876 043 (A2). In addition to voice messages an SMS message sent to a mobile station, can be a notification of a fax stored for the recipient in a network. Faxes sent to a recipient who could not be reached are typically stored in a fax mailbox corresponding to a voice mailbox, which can be integrated in connection with the voice mailbox so that both of these boxes even have the same telephone number. An SMS message sent to a mobile station can also be a notification of an electronic mail message or other corresponding message stored for the recipient in a network. Electronic mail messages that come into question in connection with the present invention are typically stored in a network at a Remote Mail Server (RMS) from where a notification message as a sign of the storing of a new electronic mail message can be transmitted to a mobile station as a SMS message of a cellular network. Hereinafter in the present description, a voice message will be used as an example of said messages stored for a user in a network.
If the question is of a voice mail system VMS located in a wireless cellular network 10, e.g. in a GSM network (Global System for Mobile Communications) a notification of the existence of a voice message is typically transmitted through the short message service (SMS) of the cellular network 10. The notification of the fact that there is a voice message waiting in the voice mail system VMS for a recipient who could not be reached, is typically sent in this case by a mobile phone operator as an SMS message of the cellular radio network to the mobile station MS of the recipient who could not be reached. In practice, in this case, the voice mail system VMS takes the initiative in transmitting the SMS message, but the transmission of the short message is effected through a short message service centre SM-SC of the network. Hereinafter in the present description, a GSM network will be used as an example of a cellular network comprising a voice mail function.
A notification of a voice message that is waiting in a voice mail system is transmitted to a recipient who could not be reached always when a new voice message is stored in the voice mail system. More typically, always when a new voice message is stored in the voice mail system, the information on the number of new, not yet listened voice messages is sent to the recipient. Also the information on the total number of stored messages can be transmitted. After obtaining the notification, the recipient can contact the voice mail system by calling the number of a voice mailbox of the voice mail system, in which voice mailbox the voice messages intended for the recipient are stored. After the establishment of the connection, the recipient may listen to the voice messages and carry out specific procedures to them, such as store or erase them.
If a plurality of voice messages are stored in a voice mailbox (the number can be, e.g. ten), an equal number of SMS messages were sent to a recipient who could not be reached, to a mobile station as a notification of the existence of the voice messages. These SMS messages (notification messages) will remain stored in the mobile station's memory until the recipient, i.e. the user of the mobile station erases them from the memory manually one at a time. This is inconvenient and consumes a lot of the user's time.
In some advanced mobile stations, such as in a Nokia 6110 mobile station and in a Nokia 9110 Communicator mobile station, all ten SMS messages mentioned in the previous chapter are not stored in different memory locations in the memory of a mobile station, but when a new SMS message as a sign of the existence of a new voice message arrives at the mobile station, an old message can be replaced by the new message. Typically, the number of new, not yet listened voice messages stored for the recipient appears from the content of the message. In this case, instead of ten messages, the user only has to erase manually one SMS message. This means, however, additional trouble to the user of the mobile station.
In addition to a voice mail system and a remote mail server, notification messages can also come to a terminal from other addresses. A plurality of notification messages can come, for example, from many different bearer services that a user has ordered. Thus, the erasure of many such notification messages from the memory of a mobile station is inconvenient and consumes a lot of the user's time.